Late 1950; i'm inbetween the moon and where you are

[themidnightson]

It's the first time he's sat down at the piano, since.

He slides in and out of the times when he's playing often, and when he doesn't play at all. It'd been spotty the last year or so, but he'd felt even more averse to the thought of it after watching her playing his piano in Carlisle's thoughts. As though it hadn't been enough she'd blown in taking everything else, from every other member of their family to his bedroom.

She'd decided to take this, too.
Like nothing was sacred. Nothing was his.
She could plow through and just take everything.

It's been a few months. It shouldn't still bother him now.

They are a known, at least as much as anything is this early. He has little reasons to rely on her visions, to believe in the unknown quantity of her. And yet. It was her vision that flipped back and forth, back and forth, back and forth (especially once he could see the changing eventualities in her visions; stealing even his choices from him, giving him only options to chose from, to reject, to fight), when the urge struck him.

When he found his fingertips playing against his leg,
the couch while reading, more than once,

thoughts turning into notes
more than words and images.






He gives in. But it is that.
Giving in. Frustrated surrender.
To the pull. To her options. The cage.


He almost hates how easy it. His fingertips touch the keys, soft, reverent, and then it's gone, it's all gone, and him with it. Everything else leaving his mind except where his fingers moved, and the sound they produced. His eyes closing as he followed a familiar piece.

Comments

[betagainstme]

It's not good enough.





And then she feels immediate shame at the thought. It is. It is good enough. But not right, not the way she knows it could be. Will be? She grows more uncertain every day.

She continues to fiddle, spinning the opal around her finger, once, twice, three times, her attention back on Edward's shoes. Then, with a sharp inhale, she straightens and focuses on his face instead. "I'll keep that in mind. Is...there anything you want to ask me?"

Does he even need to? For as pervasive as her visions are, does he realize he's there at the precipice with her? Always knowing--whether it's their future or their thoughts, doesn't he get that he's very nearly the thing he's mad at her about?

[themidnightson]

Edward doesn't comment on her first thought. Maybe he's impressed she made it three or four minutes without going there immediately. At least in her conscious thoughts. Instead of commenting, he keeps playing, and it's easier finally. To slide into Esme's piece. It's always easier when he's thinking of her. Thinking of them. Who they are.

Carlisle would be disappointed if they left now,
but Esme would be heartbroken.

There's a gentle, tender warmth to this piece. The closest he could ever come to trying to describe how much love and kindness and compassion suffused Esme. Her acceptance in the face of all adversity, and all situations, for all of them. Not one person turned away, or left alone, ever.

"No."

Before she can even move. "Yes."

"I don't know."

It's still not entirely true. It's more like he doesn't want to know. Not that he doesn't want to tell her. Or wants to give her too many answer to cloud up those visions. It's more like. He doesn't want to know what that answers really is. Inside him. When she's sitting so close. Twisting her ring. Esme grimacing, and Rose rolling her eyes, muttering, "Drama Queen much?"

Every inch he gives is on the path to just surrendering himself.
Like his room. Like his piano. Like Esme, and Carlisle.



Every inch he gives is every inch he might have to take back.
Every inch he gives is every inch he doesn't know if can get back.

When inches, and miles, and half-centuries never do come back when he gives them.

[betagainstme]

"Do you want your room back?" She hazards, leaning forward to look at him, her head tilted curiously again. "I'm sorry about that, too."

There's a slight curve to her lips that may betray that she's not that sorry. "I'll spend the next thirty years making up for it, if you want. First pick next time we move. Best view. All yours."

Her head straightens and she watches his fingers dance over the piano, the warm notes washing over her. Then she sighs and fixes him with a stare. That isn't threatening whatsoever, and her voice is gentle. "Pick one. Yes, no. Then ask a question if it's yes. You're giving me a headache."

[themidnightson]

He didn't really care about the room now. Or her lack of remorse.

It was a room. He'd already moved, and had Esme build in a whole net network of large box shelves to hold all his records, that took up that whole wall. And another, normal bookcase, for the books, as they moved between his room, Carlisle's office, and the library.



But it's the last thing she says, that makes him slightly shake his head.
Irritated already at the instruction telling him what to do. And then. That.

"How do you think I feel?"
It's rhetorical. So, so rhetorical.


And yet fraught. Weary. Uncertain.
The music notes gaining complexity.

[betagainstme]

"Feelings are Jasper's arena," she smiles beatifically at him. "I just have them. A lot of them, at times."

If she can't get him to talk, maybe she'll just talk instead.

"So, should I start with the biographical items? I'm guessing I was born in the early 1900s, because I don't seem to be older than twenty-ish. I woke up in Mississippi, in 1920, in the woods. A shallow grave, it was really creepy. A very fitting beginning for a vampire, I like to think. Alone, so it was...weird, to figure out what to do next."

Alice shrugs, glancing down at her feet. "Should I keep going?"

[themidnightson]

Edward cannot stop having feelings. Especially about her. He can't stop suddenly turning about in rooms when she thinks his name and it's like being called, the voice too new, and too often, and too distracting.

But she starts talking, and he can't help but thinking it's a beginning unlike any other he's known. Anyone else he's heard of. Changing someone was usually a very specific choice, even for those who woke them only to use them as chattel, followers, and fodder. The music finishes, and it slides into something else.

More somber, more subdue, fitting for an elegy, except that before he can stop himself one hand is at the opposite end, weaving a soft, very high, flickering of notes through the low, cloudy, thunder. Somewhere else, somewhere deeper in her head, he can hear it;

(an echo; from a thousand directions; a hundred rooms; starting like this, over and over and again; as the furniture in the rooms changes; and Alice; a dozen Alice's; laugh and sigh; while his hands make the same moves they are under his gaze)

It's hard to tell quite what the answer is, but at least he doesn't shake his head?
And, somehow, he doesn't stop playing either.

[betagainstme]

Her breath hitches.

The notes, closer to her laugh; the vision.

A smile, soft and small, on her lips as she continues to watch his hands. He hasn't told her to stop talking but now she doesn't know what else to say. Her lips press together for a moment before she chooses her next words.

"I don't remember anything before the change. Not how I got there, my childhood, why, who I was." She's whispering, barely louder than the notes he plays. "I woke up and I had a vision. Of Jasper. Cheesecake, in Philly. A diner, though I didn't know that yet. I had other visions too. Black robes, red eyes--those didn't last long. Then gold eyes, a family hunting animals."

A pause, her eyes very deliberately going to his face. "You. Um, just your...existence, at first. Nothing big. My visions at the start were...sporadic and strange. Half-formed and unhelpful. But it was a start. I knew that I didn't have to live on human blood--which was a relief after the first time, honestly. Not that there weren't...mistakes...but, well, I like people too much. Don't particularly like eating friends.

"And Jasper. I knew it'd be some time before I found him but...he's what drove me to keep going. To learn how to be me. So I could meet him in that diner. So I could meet your family."

[themidnightson]

The Volturi. He wonders briefly if she's mentioned that to Carlisle yet, and he makes a note to talk to him about it anyway. The flicker of those early momentary visions she saw. The way she tries to avoid saying you all throughout the second part if it, after that first time. Even though it lays under.

The Family; and him, specifically.

Carlisle thinks too much already on her words about how she'd seen he was going to be the other half of her, needing something more than what Jasper could provide, which in itself was, again, completely different from Carlisle & Esme, from Emmett & Rose. He doesn't even know what to think about that.

There are a lot of holes in her story, but there's a lot of time in her past, just like there is in all of theirs. "What did you do before you found him?"

It's better than the question he doesn't want to ask.
That he wants to shove down as far as possible,
And pretend didn't even exist.

[betagainstme]

"Travel. Learned the violin. French. Went to the Kentucky Derby, won a lot of money. Went to Atlantic City. Won a lot of money." Her smile is crooked and impish now, as she talks about the things she feels more confident about.

"I got outta the south pretty fast. I uh, ran into some other nomadic vampires, in Baton Rouge. Learned all about the territory wars...decided that was something I didn't need to witness, so I went up north. Spent time in New York, Jersey. Miss Louisiana though--that place is amazing. I think you could tell anyone in New Orleans that you're a vampire and they'd just brush it off."

A laugh and a silent promise that she never did so, never would.

"I sat in on a lot of classes at local universities, when I could. It was nice to learn things I didn't know. 'Course, most of the universities where women are allowed aren't all that exciting." She shrugs, fiddling with her rings again. "By then, it 1945...and the war was ending. My visions of Jasper were becoming stronger, more filled out. He was on the move, but I knew I had to wait. My vision was 1948, in that diner."

Shrugging again, Alice looks at Edward expectantly. "So uh, yeah. That's my story. Most of it. The important parts at least. I didn't do anything crazy. Except go back and win really big a few more times at the Derby, and Atlantic City.

[themidnightson]

Edward keeps playing. It doesn't all become new, and it doesn't magically become whatever it was in her head, whatever it might be. If he allows himself to think that's what her vision is supposed to say. It cycles, and circles, following the notes even into things that don't work, that he doesn't like, and has to find a way to return to.

"You never left the country?"

Somehow, and he doesn't know why, even as it hits, it surprises him.

[betagainstme]

"I was nervous." She laughs, self-deprecatingly. "Alone, trying to figure it out as is. What if I went to, I don't know, Paris? And just lost it and ate half the population?"

A shudder. All those pretty clothes would be gone. Also the people.

"And I looked, to see myself there, once." Alice stills her hands and shivers a little. "I'd thought about Italy, though I was worried about the sun. But that...flash of what I had when I woke up, red eyes and dark cloaks, it wouldn't leave me alone when I thought about it. So I just stayed. Though, I would love to travel now. Now that the big events I saw are in place--"

She carefully avoids the word mostly, even in her mind.

"--I think I will visit Paris. And London. Oh, my list is huge, but I have no idea where to begin."

[themidnightson]

The problem with that is that by trying to force herself to avoid it, it only draws even more attention to it. Like trying to hide or jump away from something. Which he watches, because he can't stop himself from doing so, but he face remained passively smooth.

"At least you can use the transatlantic now."






Beat. "I'm honestly not sure if I like them, or the boats better."
He loved the speed, but there were a lot fewer exits from temptation in the sky.

[betagainstme]

Each word she draws from him tastes like hope.

"Oh, I want to so bad!" Alice's hands clap together softly. "I took a plane from Baton Rouge to New York. That was a lesson in not-breathing but also trying to look like you're breathing."

She giggles softly. "The man next to me snored the entire trip. It was terrible. But much easier than driving across the Eastern Seaboard."

[themidnightson]

There's an oddly calculating zip that crosses Edward's expression at the example she decides to use as her personal comparison to his about the boats he and Carlisle used to get between American and Europe.

"I don't know if I can agree with that."

Edward liked cars.


Edward really, really liked cars.

[betagainstme]

"Jasper and I drove everywhere. Better with company, I think." She says fondly. "Though I did spend many alone trips singing along to the radio as loud as I possibly could."

A beat.

"Well, I did that with Jasper too but alone there was no one laughin' at me."

[themidnightson]

There's nothing about he has to imagine, as her mind supplies clips and flashes of it all. Different cars, and different scenery, in wholly different parts of the country. All of it rolling back, wind and grey and rain, the rarest streaks of sun far from cities, and that music, in slashes and hashes, muddied and more like the whisper of it, with to focus on the hilarity of singing so loudly.

Of Jasper at her side, laughing, slowly unfettering.

"We haven't done it in a long time." Though he means more the shadowed 'I,' but the best part of that is that it is true as 'We' just as much. They didn't take those kinds of drives unless they were moving a lot, and even if Rose and Emmett took a few years leave here or there, doing whatever they decided to while on them; Edward didn't.

[betagainstme]

"Well, I'll take you on a nice long drive some day, if you'll let me." She rests her elbow on her knee, cupping her chin in her palm, head turned to the side as she smiles, unfocused. "Or drag everyone along with us, if you'd rather. I'll still sing loudly, no matter what."

Besides, Alice thinks at him, I'm not half-bad a singer.

Modesty, perhaps. Or fishing for a compliment? Hmm, she's tricksy.

[themidnightson]

There's the faintest shift to his mouth. It'd be hard for anyone, even Esme or Carlisle, to pinpoint what exactly it'd been. Not really the tightening of a muscle, or press of his lips. But something, here and gone. Something ... different.

It's strange that he can't help but appreciate her backtrack. She didn't even need to, but she did anyway. From both of them, to everyone. She's becoming more careful. He still can't tell if he should be grateful or ashamed. Everyone in the house has very definite thoughts about his actions. It is all very confusing. But only for him. Well. He supposed he could accede that wasn't true. It wasn't confusing for the rest of his family. For him, obviously. For Alice (obviously, too?).

(Even Jasper's;

though confusion was far less with him, or him and Alice, and far more with the whole situation of their family. The choices they'd made. The life they lived. The way the whole thing seemed wholly impossible, even as it existed at him. No matter that Alice had told him about everything before they arrived.)

There's a small pressed line between his eyebrows, because he doesn't quite know what to say to either, and the music isn't helping. The music cracks him open, sends him spinning in spirals, as it winds, through those thoughts and emotions he'd almost rather stayed as far away as he could keep them.

Which is maybe why he chooses safely, "Esme would probably love that."

[betagainstme]

All of Edward’s thoughts to himself happen in the span of milliseconds but she still feels each one span decades, or so it feels.

Each careful word he speaks—and his words are all careful, purposefully chosen, unlike hers that fall from her mind and lips without pause—is metered and special.

“Excellent,” she smiles softly at him. “We can pick a place to travel and make it happen.”

Another pause, then: “Do you like other music too? Like, I don’t know. I love Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley...all the popular singers right now, I guess.”

[themidnightson]

There it goes again. That exuberance. He tries not to feel a little irritated it's 'that simple.' Without actually asking anyone else who might have suddenly been roped into this newest idea of hers. Pick a place, any place, and they'll go. Take as many other people as are needed, if he'll come along.

The sudden fork in focus though draws him up short in the middle of his smallest knot of thoughts, and makes his gaze shift toward her again. His head actually turn, opening his eyes most of the way to look at her. This time there is a faint press to his lips and furrow of his brow.

Something serious settling into his expression, though not darkly. As though his expression might be weighing her worth without warning, in a suddenly wholly new and wholly serious fashion. And he returns her questions with a question,

"Do you listen to anything not on the Billboard Chart Line?"

If there was one thing Edward could be said to have a hyper fixation on, that wasn't speed and any means by which it could be reproduced, it would be music. Which did not stop, only started, with the piano.

[betagainstme]

She sends him a flat look, an almost-glare. Between them:

--she reaches out, lightning quick, to flick his ear, but he'll duck in time to miss it and--

"Yes, Mr. Music Snob," Alice laughs. "I enjoy all music. But you can't sing along to Chopin's Prelude in E Minor."

[themidnightson]

It was a serious question, though there's no time for clarification -- even if he wouldn't -- before he's dodging to one side from her hand coming out, and the movement sends him leaning further down the bench away from her stool, stopping the playing with a brief clattering of the wrong keys. A strange silence sucking in where the music was seconds ago.

Even though, what she gets, is a more blasely retort,

"Not with that attitude."

[betagainstme]

Her lips purse, eyebrow quirked.

She can see, on the edges, cracks in his exterior. But under it, more shields and gates and walls than the Pentagon. The silence stretches between them for a moment and then she gestures lightly at the piano.

"May I? For a moment?" Her hands press together like a prayer.

[themidnightson]

If there was the edge of a not quite joke there seconds ago, it vanishes. Entirely. There's a flicker in his expression, but then even that compresses away entirely. An emotion, a reaction, that clouds his eyes, but isn't allowed anywhere near his muscles. A single facial feature.

There's a blink and then, there's the very faintest shrug.
Elegant and absolutely as unreadable as his face.


Before he simply gets up from the piano.



It's not like it's even a real question.

It's not like it would matter if he answered it like it was. Or as if he sees that as anything like an actual option. He hasn't overtly said no to anything, not since they arrived, not since Esme and Carlisle made their decision. Even before them. Long before them. It's not what he does. It's not who he is in this family.

He really shouldn't have let the words she said earlier matter so much. Why had he?

[betagainstme]

For a long moment, she doesn't move, knowing she asked the wrong question. Knowing it when she asked it. Before. It still fell from her lips and she wants to take it back.

But the damage is done. So she slides onto the bench and places her fingers on the keys, lightly, thinking for a moment, flipping through a catalog of songs she knows. Then, her fingers start a hymn she learned, once upon a time in the last thirty years.

She can hear Jasper's soft noise through his nose when she plays it. A good, Southern hymn, for good, Southern children. Her fingers stop just before the chorus line and she stands up again, moving to the window, her hands coming to rest behind her back.

"I'll let you be," Alice murmurs, to Edward, over her shoulder. "I'm sorry, again."

[themidnightson]

She sees it.

She sees it, and she does it anyway.

She sees it, and does it anyway, and apologies, again, only after.


After he's stood there, with a hand on the top of a wingback chair, not moving around the room as she had, her fingertips drifting over the spines of all of Carlisle and Edward's carefully kept books. Stood there, and listened. It's the least he can do. The first time she plays, and he's not hearing it through Carlisle's memory.

She is good. Not as good as Rosalie, but still good. Still skies above better than anyone who was human could even dream of playing. Their acuity and speed landing a graceful lack of pauses the human body requires during all it does.

He listens as Esme and Carlisle exchange a smile thinking he's sharing, and Emmett hums a few bars from so far out of nowhere he has to crack off into a laugh at Rosalie's surprised expression; the Tennessee boy among them. And it's fine. It is.

It's fine.
It's fine.
It's fine.

It makes them happy.
That's what matters.

She stops, and she apologizes, and he says, "It's fine."

But it's not an invitation to stay either.
(He'd almost thought he had a choice.)

Edward's done playing, for now though, and he lets himself out of the room, without even stepping back over to the piano to the pull the cover back of the keys. Esme will, likely, later. It's not like she hasn't dozens of other times, even on good days. Gives himself the leisure to go back to his new room and doesn't reappear for about an hour. Near almost perfectly an hour.


Coming down the stairs, at faintly faster than average a pass, and sticking his head in the living room only to announce to Esme he was going for a run, and with passing ease as though it is nothing else, to ask Carlisle if he'd like to come. Pausing only long enough for company, and more opened, and then closed, doors.

Because he still needs to do the first thing he thought of earlier, too. Certain loyalties will always come first, and watching for them, for things like that, anything that might pose a present or future risk to the family, before it could ever be an outwardly visible and acted on event beyond a thought, has always been his job.